Eleanor Rushing: A Novel - Hardcover

Friedmann, Patty

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1582430039 ISBN 13: 9781582430034

Publisher: Counterpoint, 1999

Synopsis

Eleanor Rushing knows Maxim Walters loves her. At the crowded city council meeting, he chooses to sit beside her; from his pulpit, he preaches only to her, a vision in white sitting in the first pew. Soon, he invites her along on a business trip to Nashville, where they make love all night long.
But Maxim sees things a little differently. The distinguished and very married preacher denies his love for Eleanor, but she understands his reluctance to walk away from the plain wife and the narrow path of virtue he chose long ago. Refusing to be refused, Eleanor showers Maxim with gifts and volunteers at the church simply to be near him.
Though she appears to be undaunted, Eleanor is, in fact, deeply troubled. Sparing no detail, she recounts the tragedy that left her mute for four years, and the abuse she has suffered at the hands of her friends and family. Though these memoirs are often at odds with those of others around her, the now-loquacious Eleanor charms us completely until we can't help but become her willing and faithful supporters. In this narrative tour-de-force - at once hilarious and deeply moving - Friedmann gives a memorable look at the willfulness of obsessive love, the caustic mix of money and leisure, and the power of memory to damage the soul.

About this title

About the Author

Patty Friedmann is the author of two previous books, Too Smart to Be Rich (1988) and a novel, The Exact Image of Mother (1991). Her articles and reviews appear regularly in Publishers Weekly, the Times Picayune, Brightleaf, and Small Press Magazine. Her short stories have appeared in Short Story, Louisiana Literature, Louisiana English Journal, and Xavier Review. She lives in New Orleans.

Reviews

The tart, sassy voice of the eponymous heroine of Friedmann's intriguing and touching new novel lures the reader into Eleanor's chronicle of her obsessive passion for a New Orleans Methodist minister. Flashbacks to earlier events in Eleanor's life reveal a series of tragedies that might have unhinged anyone. They are so outrageous and unlikely, however, that the reader begins to understand that Eleanor is suffering from many delusions, although discovering the extent of her dementia must wait until the denouement. Eleanor tells us that she was orphaned at age 10 when her parents died in a plane crash. Naomi, her grandfather's black housekeeper, sexually molested Eleanor that very night; as a result, Eleanor stopped speaking for four years. As a teenager, Eleanor had an abortion after she became pregnant by her best friend's brother. No wonder that Eleanor has conceived a passion for spiritual leader Dr. Maximilian Walters, whom she pursues with single-minded frenzy. The reader immediately perceives that Eleanor only imagines he cares for her. Establishing the tension between Eleanor's fantasies and reality, whatever that may be, Friedmann (The Exact Image of Mother) controls her narrative artfully, allowing Eleanor to unwittingly reveal her solipsistic self-absorption and arrested emotional development. The deeply screwy assurance with which she pursues Maxim is perfectly logical from Eleanor's point of view; one is reminded of the woman who stalked David Letterman. Friedmann's use of New Orleans atmosphere adds immeasurably to Eleanor's narration; such details as how the mirrors at Galatoire's create an edgy romantic narcissism offer an acutely observant insight into Eleanor's skewed thinking. The skillful interpolation of the issue of black-white relations bears direct relevance to Eleanor's story. Indeed, Naomi's voice, rendered in pitch-perfect dialogue, is one of the book's delights. But Friedmann falters in the character of Maxim; even granted that most of what Eleanor says about their meetings is a product of her deluded imagination, he seems too passive and weak-willed to be a charismatic minister. One finishes the book, however, impressed by Friedmann's wit and her compassion for human frailty. 25,000 first printing; author tour.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A lugubrious but moving account of a disturbed young womans troubled childhood and adolescence, by New Orleans second-novelist Friedmann (The Exact Image of Mother, 1991). Eleanor Rushing, like most orphans, suffers from a profound inner solitude that she has carried well into adulthood. In case you dont know it already, there is nothing worse than being a captive audience to dead silence. Eleanors parents were killed in an airplane crash when she was ten, and she was brought up in New Orleans by Poppy (her grandfather) and Naomi (Poppys black housekeeper). Poppy is the silent type, as grim as cast iron and talkative as a postwhich may be just as well, since when she learns of her parents death Eleanor is struck dumb and doesnt speak a word for the next four years. Her silence, though, may also be the result of a molestation by Naomi, who broke the news to Eleanor at her summer camp and then drove her home to Louisiana. Certainly it seems more than coincidental that Eleanor regains her speech at 14, the year shes raped by a Tulane frat-boy. Given her catalogue of traumas, it isnt surprising that Eleanor should eventually fall in love with Methodist preacher Maxim Walters. After following him to a convention in Nashville and starting an affair, she tries to convince him to leave his plain wife and start over with her. But Maxim worries about his reputation and even goes so far later as to request a restraining order to keep Eleanor away from him. The court that investigates Maxims complaint finds not only that she and Maxim were never lovers, but that Eleanors parents never died in any plane crash. Is Eleanor insane? Or merely deluded? The boundary between reality and fantasy can be elusive, especially when clouded by a succession of griefs. Depressing overall, but curiously affecting: Friedmann writes with a sensitivity that can touch the heart without falling prey to the sentimental. (First printing of 25,000; author tour) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

What starts as a pulse-quickening flirtationAeyes meeting and hands touching at a New Orleans City Council meetingAturns darker as pretty, wealthy Eleanor Rushing pursues a married Methodist minister. Convinced that she and Dr. Maxim Walters are destined to be together, Eleanor follows him on a business trip, volunteers to work in his office, stakes out his house at night, and eventually runs afoul of the law. Only gradually is it apparent that for Eleanor the line between reality and illusion is blurred and has been since she was ten and her parents died in an accident, leaving her with her grandfather and his black housekeeper, whom Eleanor accused of molesting her. Friedmann (The Exact Image of Mother, 1991. o.p.) has written a delicately balanced, sensuous tale of love and guilt and their consequences that in the end is unbearably sad.AMichele Leber, Fairfax Cty. P.L., VA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

How to explain an obsessive personality given to delusions of love? Look to childhood. Thirty-year-old Eleanor Rushing lost both parents in a plane crash when she was small, leaving her a poor little rich girl living in New Orleans with her grandfather and his housekeeper, Naomi, a warm, wisecracking black woman who has some of the best comeback lines in Friedman's second novel. Eleanor now claims Naomi molested her. But what is the raving of an unbalanced mind, and what is real? Meanwhile, Maxim Walters, a married Methodist minister, becomes the unwitting object of Eleanor's misdirected yearnings. When he travels to Nashville on business, Eleanor, who has staged an auto accident in front of his house to gain his attention, rises from her bed of pain to follow him, uninvited. She worms her way into dinner at his colleague's home, just as, convinced of their mutual passion, she manages to show up wherever he is whenever she can. This tale of sad obsession seems fearfully true to life. Whitney Scott

Edition details

• Publisher: Counterpoint
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1582430039
• ISBN 13: 9781582430034
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 275